Amaranthine

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Amaranthine is yet another of literally hundreds of lazy amateur 2D retro top-down shooter/brawlers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere.

There's really nothing remarkable about this one... except perhaps to say just how unremarkable this is in a sea of mediocre games on the shovelware end of the Steam store. How to explain this? You control a crappy pixelblob spaceship, and you shoot other pixelblobs, just like the games of old, except, worse, because this isn't as good as those, which are now free, and of course, they want your money for this one.

From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.

A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result.

There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.

The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.

Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the GameMaker Studio construction kit/toolset. This is a very poor quality toolset favoured by amateur developers as it's cheap and requires little in the way of development skill, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities. Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine. GameMaker Studio is most commonly used to make retro pixel shovelware and cash grabs.

A strong argument can be made that construction kits like GameMaker Studio should never be used to make games for profit, as the "developer", Roman Kozhukhov has done here. These construction kits are intended to teach people some of the basic principles of game development, and to make small demos to pass around with friends. They're not intended to replace to actual work of real, professional game developers. So it's inappropriate when amateurs try to use these for profit, without any actual, real game development effort taking place. This doesn't result in products that have any real meaningful value for gamers.

These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

Amaranthine didn't appeal much to the people who own a copy of the game, either. It has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the game didn't really capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is for killing 250 enemies, trivial to get, but less than 18 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the game. Hardly a success story, gamers just weren't all that interested in the game.

Reviewing SteamDB to check how popular this game was with players reveals a surprise... there's a modest spike in player counts for the game. But this only happened once, and isn't consistent with the achievement stats, that show less than 18 percent of players bothered playing the game for any reasonable amount of time. How is it possible for this game to have so many concurrent players who didn't bother engaging with this game? Trading cards. People will use card idling software to collect the cards and sell them, but this won't trigger any achievements in-game.

That tells us people only really bought this game for trading cards, and that's a damning indictment of the woeful quality. A closer look at the numbers shows the game just has a couple of players every week running up the game and idling it for cards, then deleting it. We must ask how it benefits gamers for there to be so many games like this, with little merit as a serious game, that only generate sales from people idling and selling the trading cards.

So, should you buy this game?

Amaranthine is relatively cheap at $3 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 11,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.

I played this for 5 minutes and was ready to refund it... until I realized I bought it over a month ago. So I grieved the tragic loss of the dollar I spent, and decided to try force myself to play it and have fun.

And I'm glad I did, because it delievered what I wanted from a SHMUP: interesting moment-to-moment gameplay. Every enemy type is easy to recognize and serves a unique function, and they're composed in a way that forces you to constantly assess and prioritize what to shoot (or ignore), and how you should optimally position yourself. It's also reasonably challenging and death will come quickly for you if you play carelessly and are inattentive to what's on the screen.

However, the loot and weapon system - which supposedly makes this game unique - does nothing for me because it all boils down to mindlessly min-maxing. And the only real viable weapon composition is to attach 2 fast-firing weapons to quickly take out the weak enemies, and to attach a slow-firing piercing weapon for long strings of enemies. And as long as you do this, any weapon is interchangeable for any other because they all create a horizontal strip of death in front of your ship that you simply have to line up with wherever your enemies are.

Overall, the 2 hours I played were very fun and challenging, and I enjoyed the process of learning what each enemy did while trying to improve my situational awareness. So I do recommend this game, because it's a rare breed of shmup that somehow gets procedural gameplay correct.

fUN gAME.. Best played with a mouse . Challenging , especially the Elite level where you can try to get high scores on the Global Leaderboards. Tough Game .. Fast Reaction speed is required .

Good arcade experience for its value and use of mouse the whole way through, also enjoy the toggle to enable autofire, really helps to make you manage bullet dodging.

Do recommend on one condition, play it after turning off the fog and clouds, bullets blend in far too much with the fancy background elements and for the first hour, I couldn't always tell what was hitting me less than half the time. Some bullets still seem a bit subtle on the normal background, but I could tell where 90% of the bullets being shot. That may not make the best experience for the bullet hell aficionado, but still a good time.

Horizontal space shooter. Good mouse controls. Arcade style reflex based gameplay. Roguelike mechanic. Clean futuristic presentation and graphics. Good audio. Slightly repetitive.

Listed on the Shoot 'em up Database

Fun little game Definetly worth the 3$ (or 1$ on sale ) plus a straight banger of a soundtrack.

Space Pew Pew.

A short game with simple mechanics. Can be finished in one sit together with all achievements. The entertainment/cost ratio is pretty good, since the game costs less than 1$, has achievements & cards.

I wish the game had more mechanics - different engine, hull, maybe some bombs? Anyway, it serves its purpose.

Quite simple yet enjoyable bullet dodging game.

Keep those in mind if you expect typical Shmup:
You play using mouse (I am so used to keyboard controls that I freaked out at first lol).
You have a health pool.
Your entire ship is a hit box.

I would say it's worth a try.
And for those few people, not, it is not a Steredenn clone, Steredenn is a lot less forgiving.

Pros:
- Good pixel art. Not the best but good still.
- It has loot.

Cons:
- You move with the mouse instead of the keyboard (I don't like it. It's my opinion, ok?).
- The loot is very shallow.
- It's hard to evade bullets meanwhile you try to collect money and loot, specially in the following levels.

I give it a 6/10.

I still recommend it for people that likes shmups where you control your ship with the mouse.

Ok so this game....

A lot of ppl complain about mosue control...thats easily solved withen your own settings. go to mouse under device and just set them slower.

Anyways....this game seems stupid hard at first. and it's a great bullet hell (you can adjust difficulty if yer more pro then me.)

Whats importent is how the mechanics work. and OMG they are fucking awsome!
you start with so much energy. just beat it. you need to grow.

The next lv.....well it depends a lot on loot and where you assign won energy!
That is SOOOOO cool! You can stick with basic gun power sheilds and sell the other guns (rare drops can happen!)
It's a rogue shooter! You earn loot each round to build your ship. Guns you can equip and sheilds depend on your decisions of energy distribution. Gun to slow...you CAN make it faster! want two....well divy up the energy between what you found and you can! It really is pretty cool because it takes your choices to build your ship! I prefere shields (and if lucky) continuse lazers. But that in no means I will be succesful! One is good, but two is better, but that will leave my sheilds fragile. each weapon has it's advantage between semi-homing, bullet speed so you can just dodge bullets and trust your rapid fire to hit, or my beloved continuous where we clear lanes and hope were fast enough. You have three gun slots, an upgardable sheild and each gun can be powerd with energy..this is not just a pre-req....it makes them fire faster if you dare put above neccisary to fire power in them!

TLDC
You can custom your ship in no way a 2d normaly lets you!
Bullet hell as lv's progress
FUN!!!!

Very fun, casual arcade style shooter. You get a chance to gather resources so that in between levels you can upgrade your shields and the amount of weapons you can carry on your ship.

You also come by various weapons sometimes of varying rarity. So your ship gets better and better as you progress through harder and harder levels.

Overall it's a fun casual game I throw on when I'm not really sure what I'm in the mood to play.

As a nice aside, if you get the cards and craft badges for this game it gives you the chance to get some pretty amazing profile backgrounds.

It is difficult to give this a positive review, but yet this game does not deserve negative reviews either. This is one of those games which would deserve "meh" review, because the very idea is great, but it would need just a bit of love and thought to make it a masterpiece. It is frustrating to expect that the dev will never adjust this game.

You have a ship and you shoot random enemies which spawn at random pattern and random amount from the right side of the screen. That is about it. There was a story and you needed to collect antimatter, but I dont remember it anymore.

You have only one ship with three weapon slots. Ship type doesn't matter, because you can move it with your mouse.

You can get seven different type of weapons and you just get better variations of them based by the level you have advanced. Sounds good, right? Not at all. There is only two weapons which are usable and that is the major flaw of this game. All the rest are high damage "snipers" with horribly slow shooting rate.

Compare this: 30 damage/12 bullets/second or 50dmg/6 bullets/second VS. 400dmg/ 1 bullet/second against tons of enemies.

There are TONS of enemies at any time spawning at you, so the slow weapons are useless and you end up using only two of the weapon types. You remember the old wise words, don't bring a knife in a gunfright. in this game, it would be, dont bring a sniper rifle in a machine gun fight.

You get money to buy more damage per second. That leads to grind fest and flood of rubbish weapons.

You can also collect weapons. There are the common type of weapons, which you will probably sell quickly. Then there is a bit advanced weapon with slightly better fire rate, and then rare version, which gives you better damage and fire rate. But the rare weapons are way too rare. Even the slightly better versions are also too rare, but for differenet reason. Why? Because the weapons you can collect are randomized and you can only know what you collected after you have completed the level. This leads to a situation where the rare or better weapon you collected will have 5/7 chance it is one of those rubbish weapons you will never use.

I give this game 6/10, because it have excellent idea, the final boss is best this game can give for you, but unfortunately you can only face it once. Also this game works flawlessly and it doesnt cost much. But the flaws with majority of the weapons really ruin this game.

This is one of those rare shmups with different control schemes. This time you play with the mouse, and your ship moves as fast as your mouse cursor. It takes some getting used to because since you move so freely, the screen is always filled in order to increase the challenge. You collect materials and weapons to be used later.

Lets talk about the good aspects:
- Nice soundtrack
- Runs on Linux
- Levels are random
- Graphics are pleasing and unique, they kind of have that forced retro "amateurish" look (reminds me of FTL)
- Ship upgrades are permanent (fits the increasing challenge style)

And the bad aspects:
- Upgrade system is a bit raw, the guns are so random and some of them are not effective (the ones with very fast firing rate requires you to stand still longer than you wish)
- Some components of the menu screen keep saying "loading" for some reason under Linux
- Stages backgrounds, music and enemy ships keep changing each time you load the same level, you don't feel the progression very much. I would prefer if each level set would have its own style and just change enemy placement.
- Enemy bullets blend too easily with the background and collectible items which makes them hard for you to notice and improve your dodging skills (what the hell did just hit me?)

For the price, this game is very interesting and it might be the right thing for those shmup fans that want something that plays easily on a PC without a controller for that quick fix. I hope the developer keeps releasing new games as this one for me was a nice starting point. I wish the developer would have followed the Bit Blaster XL model in which the dev kept perfectioning the game for a while, because this one could become a hidden gem with a few things addressed. All in all, nice game in a sea of mediocrity. It is all about the gameplay!

For a little old school feeling indie and 89 cent price tag (steam summer sale) I felt it was a good investment for little bit of casual fun. I felt like I was in the 80s again. There was 3 modes of play Normal, Legendary which added like a "hardcore effect" say if you die it is game over and also gave bonuses to weapons drops. Then elite mode which said infinite waves and leader board access (i didn't try it yet, but from what it sounds like it seems to be a survival mode)

I did manage to get into the warp mini-game/puzzle it was fun as well. More of a timing thing, you got little gaps you must get through as the level seems to speed up, making these gaps harder and harder to get through. Touch top or bottom of this gap and instant death, you have to restart level, complete the warp and you get a shiny. The levels themselves are randomly generated, which is good if you find yourself wanting to farm weapons and/or money a little per level wont be so repetitive with that randomly generated level system.

Further more each weapon you pick up is based on the level you are on on. Level 1 you pick up level 1 weapons so on and so on. Higher the level of weapon the more energy it needs and the more DPS it will do. Money system allows you to buy more shield (basically health) and more energy for the weapon requirements.

The weapons you loot have 3 rarities that I've seen so far, you have common whites, rare purples and legendary gold. Your ship is capable of holding 3 weapons, each weapon has it's own style of effect. You got your low damage rapid firing guns got manually guided missiles, a gun I'd say like a slow firing laser beam or maybe it is meant to resemble a rail gun, as it seemed to kill enemy and continue onward. There was a few others types aswell.

As for story, yeah they tossed in a little bit of a plot. I guess to give the game a little more meaning to it all, but don't buy this game for a story you might be let down deeply in that area. If you are buying it make sure it is a type of genre you actually just enjoy playing, because that is pretty much all you are getting. (in my case I was fine with that) I just wanted a little pass time. Usually i don't play games like this, it has been a good 10 or more years since i played a side scrolling space shooter.

I forgot to mention, you can 1 hand this game. The ship is controlled with mouse movement and mouse 1 is constant fire, so its really simple and easy to control your ship no keyboard required. (1 hand to puff on your blunt or hold a beer lol maybe rub on your honey a little w/e you need a free hand for, you have it ;) )

Overall i enjoyed my time spent, I'll probably spend a little more time in the future. If you are into this genre, give it a whirl.

Good little SHMUP. unimpressive graphics, but gameplay is good
You might need sometime to get use to the mouse controls, but once you get it the game is quite fun.
The game is fairly simple, however better instructions or a short manual would be helpful

A nice game for a few hours. Doesn't have much replay value, unless you really like competing for position in Leaderboard.

A few things in UI are not obvious:

1) You can replay previous levels by pressing left arrow on "audio casette", so there is a possibility of grinding for money, you can never be really stuck (although I didn't find it necessary on Normal difficulty)

2) To fight the final boss after you have collected all Dark Matter you need, press a small red lever on the right side of "casette" (it should be blinking).

Good idea, but falls down in a couple of key places.

1) The loot variation is not nearly interesting enough, and the weapons are not different enough to matter. It becomes just getting the biggest number, no thought to playstyle.

2) The actual game is very frustrating. The enemies that use fast/hitscan laser weapons will do a warmup cycle that shows their thing warming up, and most of the ships will give some kind of indication that they're about to do their (very rapid) attack. So, you want to keep your eyes predominantly on the playfield watching for incoming threats. The *problem* is that the bullets and attacks tend to be very unpredictable, so you need to watch what's going on around the ship. The experience of having to need to look in two places at once to avoid damage results in the experience of watching the playfield, only to have unpredictable bullet sprays and other ships run into yours, and then moving your eye over there and being hit by rapid attacks that you couldn't easily anticipate.

Good shooters are built on memorization of patterns. Even randomized shooters like Steredenn (which I'd recommend instead of this game) give you enemies that are predictable, so you can take advantage of muscle memory. This game is just flailing around with no pattern, so you never have anything to build off of.

Fast and ultraresponsive! Nastiest boss fight so far this year!

Graphics: 80%
Audio: 80%
Gameplay: 75%
Replayability: 50%
Value for money: 100%
Overall: 77%

Audio and graphics is ok for an indie game. Good music, and sound effects are as they should be. One of the tunes doesn't loop very well. But that's a minor issue. I feel there could be a bit more varied graphics in different backgrounds and such. As it is now, each level feels the same. Just harder mobs.

I was surprised that it was mouse controlled. I haven't played a mouse-shooter since the Amiga days. And this one utilizes the mouse 100%. No lag, and you feel the ship flies where you want it.

As for content, the game tends to be a bit repetetive. But the developer doesn't drag it on forever for us that want to complete it once. I beat the boss on easiest difficulty after 1,5 hour. I had to farm a little bit to get my shields up to 1000. But then I had kinda learned how to avoid the different attacks. Still good to have a buffer. Good thing you didn't have to start all over when you died, as the boss was one of the most difficult encounters I've battled in a long while.

I was a bit dissapointed of the gear though. All the guns fire forward, and there is no difference in how they fire. I boils down to just get the guns that has the highest dps you can fit with your power. It's like the loot of borderlands, but with less detail. And it's kinda awkward that even the bullets follow your ship vertically instead of going straight forward. But that's just nitpicking.

Will this last, then? I doubt I will play it much more after this. The final Achiements are winning on legend and getting to level 20 on legend. I guess that is doable with a lot of grinding and careful play, but I feel this isn't worth my time. But others may try getting further and further. If only the weapons and levels were a bit more diverse... The high-score attack in the "Elite" game is fun a couple of times, but nothing more.

Finally, was it worth my money? I got it 50% off, and it was enganging for 1,5 hour. I would even say it's worth picking up at full price.

Fun, easy to play, nostalgia filled shmup

• Great, beautiful, old school pixel graphics
  
• Fast, fun gameplay
  
• Some customization, you get to choose weapons (3 slots), energy or shield power ups for your fighter (Between missions, in a separated 'hangar' screen, from in game pick-ups)
  
• Fitting, energetic music
  
• Nix support (Mac and GNU/Linux)
  
• Permadeath mode
  
• Innovative gameplay. Yes, in a shmup! You control your ship with the mouse, basically your ship is your cursor, which makes it super maneuverable, also, you can literally play it with one finger using a trackpad.
  
• DANMAKU
  
[*] Last but not least, russian developer. Them russkies, making great games since tetris

If you are a fan of old school side-scrolling shooters then this game is a must have. It's a throw back to some of my favorite console games (think R-Type or Thunder Force). The sound track is great, and the ability to find new weapons and improve your ship is awesome. The levels are always different as well in terms of the lay out of enemies so you aren't always subjected to the same static layouts that you may be used to seeing with these games. the controls for this game are also very simple and easy to get used to. The only thing that is slightly lame about this game is maybe the backgrounds you see while playing, since they are mostly very similar and kind of boring, but that would be a shallow reason for not at least giving this game a try. This game is a steal of a deal - you won't regret it!

Was bored and haven`t played a side scroller for a while so thought I would pick this up.
I will give it a thumbs up for what it is .. it plays fairly fast, maybe the ship moves a bit too fast and can be moved almost anywhere on screen in an instant when playing with a mouse.
The game doesn`t support controller on its own but I enjoyed the game a lot more once I turned on controller companion and set the mouse speed to slower.
Maybe thats not how it was intended to be played but I prefer it like that.

Inbetween levels you can update your weapons from random pod drops that you collect from enemy ships,your ship has 3 weapon slots so you can get some nice builds.

There is a perma death option that is pretty brutal, and the steam achievements are fun .

Pretty fun shooter so I will thumbs up but only with controller companion as the mouse is far too loose IMHO.